Page 11 of Sinful Sorrow

“Yeah, fluffed! This world is made up of fluffers or fluffees. Archer and Tim, and even me, are the fluffers. We’re the ones who make sure you’re fed and warm and safe. We take care of you, because you won’t take care of yourself. And you’re the fluffee, the one who is used to meals being placed in your hand and blankets being draped on your lap.”

“Fluffers and fluffees?”

“Exactly! Every single person on this planet fluffs you, Mayet. Maybe not your whole life, but certainly since you’ve arrived in Copeland. I, on the other hand, am a fluffer. I’m the one who makes sure you eat and that you’re happy. I like my role in life. I like taking care of you. But Tim is also a fluffer, taking care of people. You and Archer are opposites. Fluffer and fluffee. It works, like yin and yang. But Tim and I are two yins, no yangs. And this particular yin won’t even discuss what the hell is going on, which only throws our balance further out of alignment. Yin and yang are supposed to create the perfect pairing of dark and light. We’re supposed to be equal opposites. But now we’re just… we’re both yangs. And two yangs can’t make a yin.”

“You’re saying a lot of things, Doctor Emeri, and lots of those things are the same things, just topsy turvy and repeated.”

She stares at me over the top of her glasses. Glaring. And not the least bit impressed.

“So this man, who was born and raised to be the epitome of dark, wants you, the hippie’s apprentice, whose entire existence is light and rainbows and good feelings. And despite all that, you don’t think together, you create balance?”

“He wants to fluff me!”

“So let him! It’s a burger, Emeri. It’s his way of seeing you before you head home, since he’s stuck working the bar and can’t very well leave it unmanned. Well,” I amend with a snicker, “except for when he does, like tonight, for instance. He’s not screwing with your yin or your yang by wanting to cook a meal for you. He’s just doing what he can to save his mental health because he loves you and wants to be near you. It’s not fluffing like how you fluff. It’s his only option, unless he wants to sell his bar and enjoy early retirement. Which,” I grumble, now that money is back in the forefront of my mind, “he could afford to do, since those guys are totally friggin’ loaded anyway.”

“What are you gonna do about the house on the hill?” And just like that, she swings our conversation to me while simultaneously clamping Naomi’s belly flaps open to reveal a baby inside its sac. So easily identifiable. Not fully formed yet. Not viable. But it has two legs. Two arms. Probably ten fingers and ten toes, which we’ll confirm soon for our final report. It has a face. Eyelashes. A button nose. And one little thumb perched between its lips.

Dammit.

“She’s a girl.” With a sad sigh, Aubree gently tilts the sac to get a clearer view of the top. “She was already head down and formed enough for us to know.”

“And now she’ll be with her mother forever. It’s a tragedy,” I concede with grief burrowing into my heart, “there’s no denying that. But if mother and baby must die, there must be comfort in knowing they went together, right?”

“I mean…” She eyeballs the baby to ascertain rough measurements. I don’t have to be inside her mind to know she’s cataloging. Weighing. Documenting. And soon, she’ll do it with tools and scales. “I’d find more comfort if they got to live and their attacker was hit by a car on their way to the crime scene today.” She releases the sac and brings her focus back up to mine. “So, the house on the hill? Which will henceforth be known as the Waterfalls.” She flashes a smile, a complete contrast to the devastation laid out between us. “Since it’s a mansion with its very own waterfall in the backyard. We have to name these things, ya know, so we don’t confuse this mansion with the one in New York that you also own now that you’re legally married to a Malone.”

“None of which I wish to think about right now.” I turn from the table and make a beeline for the sink. “Nothing in New York touches us. I refuse to let it occupy my mental space. And the house on the hill will simply sit there. Vacant. I’m not leaving my apartment any time soon. Which, luckily, Archer supports. For now, everything remains as is. And maybe in the future, at some point when the thought of mowing an acre of grass doesn’t make me break out in hives, I’ll consider moving to the big, stupid house with the waterfall. Which is dumb, by the way.” I slap the tap on and lather soap in my palms. “Why would I intentionally add a commute to my workday when living down here, just two blocks from my office, is way more convenient?”

“Something about trading a shoebox apartment for a mansion.” She peels her gloves off, then the plastic glasses as I scrub my hands. “It’s a whole ass house, Mayet. I could move in with you and you wouldn’t even notice I was there.”

“You’re not moving in with me. Space is important.” I flip the tap off and grab paper towels. “Space is wonderful. We cannot work together and live together, Emeri. Our delicate friendship wouldn’t withstand that kind of pressure.”

“Delicate,” she snorts, then she looks down to her ankle, covered in flare-bottom jeans, and jiggles her leg to move the anklet I know is hidden beneath the denim. “There’s nothing delicate about us, Boss. But,” she brings her eyes up and raises her hands in a stop signal. “I agree, we could not live together. I like my apartment, and I especially like not knowing too much about your sex life.”

Unimpressed, I pointedly look at the recorder, documenting every single morsel of crap we speak.

“I’m gonna grab stomach contents,” she inserts, bringing us back to our work. And her, further away from punishment. “Blood as well. And hair. I’ll send it all down to the lab. Though, like you said, a horse is a horse and I doubt tox will reveal anything we don’t already know.”

“I’ll deal with the fetus, if you’d like.” I don’t miss the fact she’s yet to cut the sac open. Or lift it completely from Naomi’s body. The baby girl remains head down, tucked neatly inside the pubis, and Aubree… well, she took her gloves off for a reason. “I’ll get formal measurements and wrap her up. Naomi’s parents can elect how they’d like her presented for burial after the detectives have concluded their investigation.”

“Yeah.” She sniffles. It’s singular. Discreet. There are no tears in her eyes or boogers streaming from her nose. But some cases hit harder than others. And this one, the lost futures, seems to be the one messing with her. “Thanks,” she adds finally, turning to our table of instruments and perusing our selection of shears. “I’ll work on documenting Naomi’s heart, since ultimately, that’s where we’ll find cause of death.”

“We only need an hour. Two at the most.” I reach into Naomi’s body and gently cup the baby, drawing her and her amniotic sac up carefully. Soon, I’ll cut the bag open. Collect the fluids. Pull the placenta away from the wall of her womb and test that, too.

But for this moment in time, I simply study what would have been, in twenty more weeks, a brand-new baby girl. Her length—no more than six inches from top to tail—and her little legs, curled up to rest against her chest.

“I really hope this wasn’t some ploy by her boyfriend to escape responsibility,” I sigh, knowing I tap-dance across the line of impartiality and professionalism. Which is not something I ever did before moving to Copeland. “If he wanted to go to college and live the bachelor life. If he realized he didn’t want the family they were talking about. There are other, better ways to deal with this that don’t include murdering the woman you swore you loved.”

ARCHER

“Tell us everything that went down at the haunted house.” Fletch paces behind my chair. His eyes are on the boy, a grown man by legal standards, but still, a child not so long ago. “No one is in trouble yet, Mason. No one is being accused of anything. Even the kid with the knife is, in my opinion, a victim in all this. So we need you to explain it all to us. From the start of your night until now, talk it out so we can get a picture of what happened.”

“She didn’t…” Mason blubbers. Sobbing. He’s a complete mess, while right beside him, his highly paid, sharply dressed, lady-lawyer prepares to jump in at any moment to save her client from incriminating himself. “She didn’t wanna go,” he chokes out. “We do the stupid haunted house every single year, because our friends like it. But Naomi and I…” He fists a wad of tissues and mops at his face.

Already, the clock on the wall reads midnight. The bullpen outside our interview room is quiet. Occupied by the night-shift, but there’s a calmness that settles between the hours of twelve till six… until there’s not.

“Naomi and you, what?” Fletch prompts. “You have to explain it, Mason.”

“We don’t enjoy it. We don’t…” He shakes his head. “Brent and Kallie are into all that spooky stuff. They’re always at the midnight showings of horror movies. They take October every year and turn it into a whole holiday with free rein to torment everyone else. They like Halloween, so every year Naomi and I tag along, since it’s just one month a year. But a haunted house, to them, is just… it’s like kindergarten. Ya know? They’re desensitized by all the other scary stuff they watch.”

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